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New Braunfels Herald Zeitung (Newspaper) - February 8, 1985, New Braunfels, Texas
Man to discuss prosperity plan
“God’s plan for prosperity” will be the topic of discussion Saturday and Sunday at Tree of Life Fellowship, 125 Highway 81 West.
The services will feature David Copple of Sacramento, Calif. For the past several years, Copple has been discussing what he calls “God’s formula for prosperity.
Wage earners are feeling the pinch of inflation, say Tree of Life leaders. Coppled formula solves the problem for many church goers according to pastors who have sponsored the services.
Copple uses a chart showing 50 to IOO Scriptual references. Copple tells how he built a business from an organization with financial woes.
Pastor Donald F. Duncan invites all interested persons to the lectures. There is no charge for the seminar, but a free-will offering will be taken. Participants should attend all the services — Saturday at 7 p.m.; Sunday at IO a.m. and 7 p.m. Call 625-6375 for more information.
DAVID COPPLE
Vatican sanctions
Catholic priests maintain posts with Nicaraguan government
By GEORGE W. CORNELL AP religion writer
All four Roman Catholic priests holding high posts in the Nicaraguan government evidently are sticking to their jobs, and for doing so are barred by the Vatican from exercising their priesthood.
This became apparent this week after another of them, the American-born Rev. Miguel d’Escoto, met with the head of his order and made clear he would stay on as Nicaragua's foreign minister.
His order, the U.S.-founded Maryknoll Fathers and Brothers, emphasized that he remains a member priest and has the group’s “support, respect and friendship” in heeding his conscience to serve the Nicaraguan people.
He was the third of four priests in the Nicarguan government to make that choice, and apparently the deadline was near, or passed, for the fourth to be automatically suspended for staying in Nicaragua's Cabinet.
Three remain priests, but under the Vatican sanctions are prohibited from celebrating Holy Communion or other sacramental roles. The fourth. Edgar Parrales, Nicaragua's ambassador to the Organization of American States, resigned last month from the priesthood.
Nicaragua's education minister,
Three remain priests, but under the Vatican sanctions are prohibited from celebrating Holy Communion or other sacramental roles. The fourth resigned last month from the priesthood.
the Rev. Fernando Cardenal, was dismissed from the Jesuits in December, and the culture minister, the Rev. Ernesto Cardenal, would have had to resign this week to avoid automatic suspension under a time limit set by Bishop Paulo Vega.
They all had voluntarily abstained from exercising their priesthood since 1981 at the request of the Nicaraguan bishops, but Pope John Paul II ordered them formally suspended from priestly functions unless they stepped down.
The Vatican has been pressing the case for more than a year under the pope's opposition to priests in public office, a policy incorporated into the recently completed revision of canon law.
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Religious officials deal with dissidence
The Rev. William Boteler, superior general of the Maryknollers, based in Maryknoll, N.Y., said it has backed d’Escoto in his government service because of his “consistent and creative policy in peacemaking.”
He has “labored tirelessly to preserve peace in Nicaragua and has made a major contribution to avoiding a regionalization of war in Central America,” Boteler said.
He said that when he met with d’Escoto last week to give him the Vatican’s notice, d’Escoto indicated “he feels in conscience he can best serve the cause for peace and reconciliation” by staying in office.
He “painfully agrees to conform to the sanctions imposed by the Vatican with the hope it holds for him to return to the full exercise of the priesthood in the future,” Boteler said in a statement.
The Maryknoll order, the U.S. Roman Catholic bishops and most Protestant denominations have opposed U.S. support for guerrillas fighting the Nicaraguan government.
d’Escoto, 52, bom in I.os Angeles and educated at U.S. Catholic colleges and at the Maryknoll Seminary in New York, served as a missionary in Chile for nine years and for another nine years as communications director at Maryknoll headquarters until being named Nicaragua's foreign minister in 1979.
Associated Press
PITTSBURGH — The controversy surrounding the jailing of dissident Lutheran minister D. Douglas Roth has forced his religious superiors to weigh age-old moral questions as they grapple with the “awesome problem” of a grassroots rebellion in their ministerial ranks.
Armed with Bibles and statistics of acute unemployment in their bluecollar parishes, Roth and about a half-dozen other Lutheran ministers in the Pittsburgh area have publicly criticized their religious superiors, demonstrated and defied secular court orders, all in the name of social justice.
Roth and his colleagues say Lutheran officialdom is corrupted by monied interests and isn’t doing enough to help steelworkers and other unemployed.
Church officials retort that the ministers are power-seekers who are distorting the Bible and misreading church documents.
“This has been one awesome problem,” says the Rev. Mont O. Bowser of the Western Pennsylvania-West Virginia Synod of the Lutheran Church in America.
The struggle has raised questions about the authority of a bishop in the non-hierarchical Lutheran church to discipline his ministers and about the role of civil courts in internal church disputes.
“It has implications for every denomination in the country,” says the Rev. Allen Riethmiller, who is pastor of Christ Lutheran Church in West Newton, east of Pittsburgh, and a critic of a 5-year-old clergy-steelworker alliance called the Denominational Ministry Strategy.
Bowser, an assistant to synod Bishop Kenneth May, says the outspoken defiance of the ministers is "unprecedented.”
“We have never had a group of people who are as persistent as these,” he says. “They just don’t take no’ for an answer.”
The rebel Lutheran ministers are members ofstDMS, which also includes ministers from several other denominations. The organization has charged the synod with union-busting at a synod-run nursing home. The
group contends the synod is allied with large corporations that have exported jobs from this depressed steelmaking region through their investment policies.
‘.‘Would you obey a bishop if he is busting a church agency union and putting those families in the street?” reads one DMS release. “Would you obey a bishop who fronts for corporate interests to try and crush biblical prophetic ministry that is keeping the plight of the unemployed in focus?”
Roth was jailed Nov. 13 after disobeying the synod’s order, backed up by a civil court, to give up his pastorate at the Trinity Lutheran Church in Clairton. The synod fired him Oct. 17 after more than half of Trinity Lutheran’s approximately 145-member congregation objected to Roth’s pro-labor radicalism.
Other DMS members later helped occupy Roth’s church, withholding its keysrecords and funds frochurch superiors in defiance of a court order.
The synod originally supported DMS when it was founded as a forum for finding solutions to declining church membership as people left the region’s depressed steel towns in search of work.
But Bowser says the Lutheran synod and several other denominations withdrew financial and moral support as the group became more vocal. At this year’s synod convention, a gathering of ministers and lay delegates from each of the 336 congregations in the synod, a motion was passed censoring DMS.
"It does not mean we forbade our pastors to participate in the DMS,” Bowser says. “It just said, ‘Don’t associate it with the Lutheran Church.’ ”
In voluminous news releases, the ministers frequently cite the Bible and Martin Luther and refer to an admonition in the Augsburg Confession, the central Lutheran document, to "obey God rather than men.”
"I think these DMS people flatter themselves by comparing themselves to Luther,” says Riethmiller. "Luther was dealing with a corrupt church hierarchy. They are claiming
the same now, which I think slanderous.”
The DMS ministers insist pub] outcry is needed to stir up change. r “There’s people all over ti country tuning into the uner ployment scene. That’s what we’] accomplishing,” says a DM member, the Rev. William Rex of S Mark’s Lutheran Church in Traffori
The Lutheran Church in America national headquarters in New Yoi City has declined to comment, sayir that “responsibility for discipline i ministers... is vested in the synods.’
DMS, led by Charles Honeywell, professional organizer, argues thi May is exceeding his authority as bishop in a church that traditional! has de-emphasized hierarchy.
Unlike the Roman Catholi Church, bishops in the Luthera Church in America derive thei authority from the synod conventior that elect them.
“The bishop does indeed have ver limited powers,” Bowser says. “Th Lutheran church in Europe is hierarchical church. But in th United States, the Lutheran church i a democratic system.”
Roth has portrayed his defiance c a synod-obtained court order agains preaching at Trinity Lutheran as a act of civil disobedience justified b the church’s own statements o economic justice.
“The secular courts canno mandate the silence of the Gospel,’ he said during a sermon aftei Allegheny County Common Plea: Court Judge Emil Narick or de re( him to obey the synod’s order to ctej down as pastor.
Riethmiller says the synod had rn choice but to turn to civil courts.
“Unlike medieval times, the bishoj no longer has a militia of his own tc carry out his orders,” he says.
The synod has not criticized the DMS’s theological statements limiting its criticism to the group's confrontational tactics, such as disrupting services at churches where May and certain corporate leaders are members.
“They have valid points, certainly the concern for the unemployed and others distressed by the economic situation,” Bowser savs.
Pictures remind us of all the precious moments in our baby's life.
Remember the special times of this first year by including your baby in the New Braunfels
Hvrald-Zeltung
Second Annual. . .
Babies On
Parade
Children, Grandchildren, Nieces, Nephews, any child special to you that was bom in 1984.
Bring your favorite child’s photo to the Herald Zeitung office, 186 S. Casted, Monday thru Friday between 8:30 a.m. and 5:00 p.m. or mail coupon below with photo and *8.00 to the Herald Zeitung, P.O. Drawer 361, New Braunfels, Texas 78131.
Deadline to submit photos and information is 5:00 p.m. Wednesday, February 13, 1985. You may pick up your baby’s picture anytime during office hours after Monday, February 25, 1985. At this time you will receive one FREE copy of Babiaa on Parade. Additional copies will be available at a cost of 50*.
Baby * name_______
Date of birth_
Place of birth
Weight at birth.
Length at birth
Mom k Dad'* name
Grandparent* name
Please leave phone number or address (it will not be published) so we may contact you if we have any questions
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